Psychology in Social Context: Issues and Debates

Psychology in Social Context: Issues and Debates provides a
critical perspective on debates and controversies that have divided
opinion within psychology both past and present.

Explores the history of psychology through examples of classic
and contemporary debates that have split the discipline and sparked
change, including race and IQ, psychology and gender, ethical
issues in psychology, parapsychology and the nature-nurture
debate

Represents a unique approach to studying the nature of
psychology by combining historical controversies with contemporary
debates within the discipline

Sets out a clear view of psychology as a reflexive human
science, embedded in and shaped by particular socio-historical
contexts

Written in an accessible style using a range of pedagogical
features - such as set learning outcomes, self-test questions, and
further reading suggestions at the end of each chapter

Philip John Tyson is Director of Studies for Biological and
Behavioural Sciences in the Department of Natural and Social
Sciences at the University of Gloucestershire. He has a special
interest in mental health, neuropsychology and critical
psychology.

Dai Jones is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the
University of Gloucestershire. His interests include psychology in
a social context, everyday psychology, and connectionist approaches
to cognition.

Jonathan Elcock is a Senior Lecturer at the University of
Gloucestershire. His current research interests include historical
and conceptual issues in psychology, and how psychology interacts
with social class.

"These issues aside, this is a compelling and wide-ranging book that encourages the reader to look for the moral values and cultural assumptions at the heart of the apparently unbiased science that is psychology." (The Psychologist, 1 November 2011)

"Presenting important ideas about the ways that psychologists view the knowledge they generate, this book would be a good companion to a textbook based on the conventional hypothetical-deductive model of research. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty." (Choice, 1 October 2011)

Psychology in Social Context is a book that should be
compulsory reading for all psychology undergraduates. However you
define psychology, it is a discipline that is rooted in a social
context with traditional underlying philosophical assumptions about
how behaviour should be defined and explained. This book brings
these important and much overlooked issues to life and will
challenge students to think more deeply about many of the features
of their psychology courses that both they – and their
teachers – often take for granted.
—Graham C.L. Davey, Professor of Psychology,
University of Sussex, UK

I wish Psychology in Social Context: Issues and Debates
had been available long ago. This thought-provoking book is a
useful corrective to traditional texts that, with little regard for
psychology’s sociopolitical context, misrepresent the
discipline's conventional ways of doing things as inexorably
leading in positive directions. But rather than reject psychology
as hopelessly irredeemable, Psychology in Social Context
offers a constructive overview of the bottom line: students who
understand psychology's historical and cultural trajectory can
think more critically about the field's mainstream norms, learning
to sort out when traditional approaches might be merely habitual
rather than appropriate and useful, and when alternatives might
make more sense. The book’s clear and engaging descriptions
of controversial issues will generate animated classroom discussion
in traditional introductory or social psychology courses as well as
in critical psychology.
—Dennis Fox, Emeritus Associate Professor of Legal
Studies & Psychology, University of Illinois, USA

Informed by the latest conceptual and historical scholarship,
Psychology in Social Context: Issues and Debates is an
astute examination of a clutch of problems and controversies that
derive from the recognition that Psychology is saturated with
ethical values, social ambitions and political agendas. This
radical yet accessible text has the potential to inspire an entire
generation of psychologists into rethinking the processes they
employ to develop practice and generate knowledge.
—Geoff Bunn, Chair, BPS History &
Philosophy of Psychology Section, Manchester Metropolitan
University, UK

Instructors

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